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Gov. Walker appears on UpFront with Mike Gousha

Gov. Walker says bonuses given to some state employees came from money already in each department's budget, and are necessary to reward high-performing workers.

On the April 29, 2012 episode of UpFront with Mike Gousha, Gov. Scott Walker warned that job losses might again ramp up in Wisconsin if either Tom Barrett or Kathleen Falk are elected in the June 5 recall because “they will rehash the collective bargaining issue,” scaring off potential employers.

Walker said surveys of businesses show that the “biggest single worry they have is what’s going to happen in this recall.”

“They don’t want to see the positive foundation reversed for us to go back in time not only to the Doyle days … but even back to what we see in Illinois right now,” Walker said on Sunday’s show, produced in conjunction with WisPolitics.com. “That’s where Tom Barrett, that’s where Kathleen Falk would to take us.”

Walker said Wisconsin’s job picture was improving in January and February of last year, shortly after he took office, only to deteriorate when concern over his budget repair bill led to prolonged massive protests at the state Capitol.

Recently released federal figures show Wisconsin is the only state in the country that had “statistically significant” job losses over the past year.

Walker says the political uproar that has continued in the state has contributed to employers being afraid to add jobs.

“Barrett or Falk, I think, would be a huge setback for jobs,” Walker said.

During an appearance on Gousha’s show in January, Walker said no business leaders had told him they had decided against investing in Wisconsin or creating jobs here because of the economy and he didn’t want to “overinflate” any impact they were having. But he said a survey showed they were a factor in business decisions.

Walker also told UpFront he won't pursue right-to-work legislation if he retains office and praised private sector unions as major partners in business development.

“I think it is clear after all that we’ve been through this past year our state needs to move forward and having a big battle over something like that’s not something we’d be interested in doing,” Walker said of right-to-work.

Asked if he worries about new information surfacing from the John Doe investigation that could change the outcome of the election, Walker answered, “I don’t think so, but I don’t know. That hasn’t been brought to our attention. There may be questions about other information that has come out, some of it’s true, some of it hasn’t been true, but that’s not attributable to (Milwaukee County DA) John Chisholm."

-And Walker blasted Barrett as a mayor who has presided over the past eight years of economic downturn in the city of Milwaukee. He rejected claims from the Barrett camp that he – as Milwaukee County executive for eight years before being elected governor – shared responsibility for high unemployment in the Milwaukee metro area.

“The failure is fundamentally at the city level,” Walker told UpFront.

Last week, Walker received criticism from Democrats for handing out bonuses to several state employees even though has repeatedly said the state is broke. Walker said he didn't have direct authority over the bonuses, but that they were all within each individual agency’s budget. He said he hopes to give out more bonuses in the future to deserving state workers.

“The bigger issue long-term is I want to give employees bonuses,” Walker said. “I want school districts and local government and state government to be able to give bonuses based on performance, not just across the board.”